


Lance Hunter, Legend (?)

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 03:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13068051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: When Fitz says that the SHIELD team is trapped in the future, there's really only one solution.“Wait, are you saying that your parents are time travelers and that wasn’t your first idea?”





	Lance Hunter, Legend (?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MusicalWheaten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalWheaten/gifts).



> for emily, who deserves this head canon. i hope the actual episode with your boy in it on friday treats you well, if not, at least there's this?

Fitz is saying something about time travel, and another monolith, and the missing team - and “I have an idea, but it’s probably a terrible idea.” 

Bobbi, driving tilts her head slightly to look at him, “Which ideas of your aren’t terrible?”

He’s mature enough not to stick his tongue out at her, only just barely though. 

Which is probably just because Fitz, at least sounds interested, or desperate, more likely desperate, “I’m willing to take anything at this point.” 

“Then I think we should call my parents.” 

 

*

 

It starts like this. 

Boy finds girl. 

Boy takes girl time traveling. 

Boy falls in love with girl. 

Boy loses himself. 

Girl finds boy. 

Girl breaks time. 

Boy fixes time. 

Girl falls in love with boy.

Bad guys show up to ruin everything. 

 

*

 

“You have parents?”

“Of course, I-” Lance laughs a little, “Of course, I have parents. Everyone has parents.” 

There’s a look in Fitz’s eyes, something Lance can see in the rear view mirror, a look that says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Lance can understand that he’s got his own complicated family issues, and this the idea of cracking those issues back open. Well, it’s something that Lance came to  _ this  _ Earth specifically to avoid. 

“You know, it’s not the worst idea,” Bobbi says, because she knows all of his secrets by now. She’s known them for years.

After all, Bobbi had been the one at the wedding that his mum had hit on. Smiling too wide about how their baby grew up without anyone even noticing, while turning down drinks and pressing a hand to her stomach when nobody was looking. 

“What are they then? MI6 or Interpol or-” 

He cuts Fitz off with two words that instantly silence the car, “Time travelers.” 

The silence doesn’t last for long. 

“Wait, are you saying that your parents are time travelers and that wasn’t your first idea?” 

“Look, I’m not on the best of terms with them, especially not my dad, and I’d rather not-”

“Welcome to the club.”

Bobbi laughs at that, “So, my parents are great, and perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

 

*

 

His father had lost a son before. 

Lost too many people to count. 

Enough that he couldn’t risk losing another. 

He tells him this one night, when they’re both old enough to have had this conversation years before. But time doesn’t work like that, and he and his old man look nearly the same in age.

Close enough to be brothers, rather than father and son.

As if that will excuse it all away. 

As if that will excuse the home, the woman with a too wide smile, and a british accent that told him he could call her  _ mother  _ even though he had one of his own. That told him he could change his name if he wanted and become a new person, a person that doesn’t have to be held down by the weight of being yet another  _ Michael _ . 

As if that will excuse the echoes and fractures of his mum that he sees throughout time. Her blonde hair tied up away from her face, a scream splitting through the cold night air, the creeping feeling of death welling up in his lungs.

As if that will excuse the boy with features that match up just like his, that will one day choose a name just like his own, a  _ Hunter  _ to match the boy that first taught him how to use a knife and make it hurt. Unwillingly creating a paradox of his own.

As if that will excuse the knowledge that when the bad man had asked them to choose between their son and the whole of history, they’d chosen the one that didn’t involve him, having already broken it over less. 

As if that will excuse the offer, half given when he turns eighteen, used to the frequent visits of parents that never seem to age, given by a man that already knows what his answer will be.

“The Time Bureau could use someone with your potential.” 

“The Bureau can fuck off.” 

 

*

 

“What do you about the multiverse theory?”

They’ve had this discussion before, a stack of paper on the floor of a base that’s now long since broken, but Fitz explains again as they drive down the road heading to their safe house. He sounds confident and Lance can’t blame him, as far as this universe was concerned it was a good explanation, but as someone that had known more, as someone that had grown up in a place between time and space, as someone who had traveled down the path before.

“All of that is rubbish.”

“What?” 

“There’s fifty-two earths,” Lance explains, holding up five fingers on one hand, and two on the other, “Well, fifty-three if we count nazi earth.”

“We don’t count nazi earth,” Bobbi says. 

“Right, so fifty-two, and we’re here on Earth Forty-Six,” he switches so he’s holding up the right amount of fingers. “But I’m from Earth One.” 

“Wouldn’t Earth One be whatever earth you’re on and then you’d count outwards from there,” Fitz asks, making a point which is far too logical for the universe. 

“See it’s talk like that that opens up a black hole.” 

 

*

 

His mum tells it like a romance, trapped together on  _ family  _ bonding trip through the 1950s, which he is pretty sure if more of a power play against his father than anything else.

He’s twelve, and she’s maybe thirty, and they’re hiding out in some cookie cutter house with a white picket fence pretending to be the new family in town during a neighborhood barbeque. He could see the judgement in their eyes and for a second he wants to say something. That they don’t understand, that time doesn’t function in a linear line, that technically he hasn’t even been born yet. 

It doesn’t matter in the end. 

There’s gunfire, and his bulletproof Uncle Nate stepping in front of his to block off the fire, and it’s that taste for adventure that he could never forget.

“Why can’t I stay with you,” he asks, when the mission is over. 

And there’s something in his mum’s face, a look that is reflected on all the other Legend’s faces, his aunts and uncles, the ones that stop by the home sometimes and give  _ mother  _ hell before giving him some sort of gift stolen out of time. The ones that taught him how to lie and hack and steal and how to pilot a time ship. 

“I suppose, one more anachronism can’t hurt.” 

It doesn’t hurt.

Not the anachronism, a level four in Ancient Rome. 

What hurts comes when it’s all over, and he sees the familiar navy suits of the Time Bureau officers sitting in his mum’s study. 

“No.” 

“Now, Mr. Hunter-”

“It’s Lance,” he snaps too quickly, not missing the flash of hurt in one of the Time Bureau agent’s eyes. 

_ Good _ , he thinks,  _ It should hurt _ . 

 

*

 

“Which one are you calling,” Bobbi asks, leaning against the side of the safe as he carefully enters the right combination. The one that will open the secret compartment, the one that holds his relics from his world. The way home if he ever chose to take it. Back to the Earth One, and the Time Bureau, and the life that he never would have gotten the chance to live.

At least here on this Earth, he had had Izzy and Idaho, for a little while.

At least here on this Earth, he had had the SHIELD team, for all that they had reminded him of the organization he never wanted to join. 

At least here on this Earth, he had Bobbi, for most of the time. 

“The Legends or the Time Bureau, is that really a question?”

“True.” 

 

*

 

For a while he takes a time ship of his own, becomes a time pirate, because why not? 

The universe is his oyster, and there’s plenty of people that will pay a good buck for some renegade time traveler to mess things up just the way they want. It works, it’s fun, and every once in awhile he runs into people trying to put time back together right. People that look at him with confused looks, faces that have never seen him before, not yet. 

He watches them once. 

Two people that he knows will eventually fall for each other, but at the moment are arguing about whether sleeping with the Queen of France (again) was actually a solution to their time traveling crisis. 

“You’re just jealous, I won’t sleep with you,” the woman says, a laugh on her lips. 

Lips that in a few years the man will kiss, when he finally realizes what his heart wants. “Miss Lance, I can assure you the last thing I want is to be another one of your  _ conquests _ .” 

 

*

 

“You should probably warn him about them.”

“Warn me,” Fitz says, sounding just the right amount of alarm, “About more than just Time Travel and other Earths existing.” 

“Well, yeah,” Lance says, “My extended family is a bit, well mate, you’ll see where I got it from.” 

“That bad?”

“That bad,” Bobbi confirms. 

While Lance rolls his eyes, before pressing down the button on the beacon. “My mum’s the captain of a time ship, but it’s her team that really gets to you. Criminals, and computer hackers, and billionaires with hearts of gold, and basically Captain America but cooler and my aunt, and bulletproof frat boys - and actually they’re kind of like our old team, but happier and they mess things up a lot more.”

“These are the people we’re trusting to rescue the team?”

“In their defense,” Bobbi tries to reassure him, “They usually mess things up for the better.”

 

*

 

In ends like this. 

Breaking into Star Labs, and calling in a favor from Cisco. 

To pick a world at random, one where he can lose himself, and be a new man without the risk of super villains and time criminals coming for his head to hurt his powerful parents. 

He’ll never be a Legend, never have a corner office that overlooks all of time, but he’s fine with that. 

He stares down at his new passport, and reads off the name  _ Lance Hunter _ . 

 

*

 

“So let me get this straight, you just busted this kid out of jail-”  she says, pointing out Fitz, “And now, you want us to use our time ship to bust your friends out of futuristic space jail.”

“Yeah, that’s about it,” Lance confirms. 

“Alright, I’m in.”

“Can you really take us there,” Fitz asks, finally sounding like his old self for the first time since Lance busted him out.

“Sure, I mean, technically I can take you anywhere,” she points out, “We could just go to Aruba instead, I hear it’s lovely this time of year...” 

“Mum!”

“It was just a suggestion.”

“Probably the better one,” comes a grumble, the first thing his father has said. He’d been shocked to see his father with his mother, but he’s there, even in that old worn trench coat he used to wear before he became a Director of the Time Bureau. Though he’s abruptly reminded why his father hadn’t been his first choice to call, when his father continues speaking, “He takes after you, Sara, already breaking all of rules of time travel.”

“Seeing as I just busted you out of jail, I’m taking that as a compliment.”

“Wait, why was dad in-”

“I mean, I guess the real question is, who hasn’t staged a prision break in this family.”

  
  



End file.
